this reference to names as guides in criticism, and all furnish
illustrations of it in our own practice; for, check ourselves as we
will, the first impression from any sort of work must depend on a
previous attitude of mind, and this will constantly be determined by the
influences of a name. But that our prior confidence or want of
confidence in given names is made up of judgments just as hollow as the
consequent praise or blame they are taken to warrant, is less commonly
perceived, though there is a conspicuous indication of it in the
surprise or disappointment often manifested in the disclosure of an
authorship about which everybody has been making wrong guesses. No doubt
if it had been discovered who wrote the 'Vestiges,' many an ingenious
structure of probabilities would have been spoiled, and some disgust
might have been felt for a real author who made comparatively so shabby
an appearance of likelihood. It is this foolish trust in prepossessions,
founded on spurious evidence, which makes a medium of encouragement for
those who, happening to have the ear of the public, give other people's
ideas the advantage of appearing under their own well-received name,
while any remonstrance from the real producer becomes an each person who
has paid complimentary tributes in the wrong place.

Hardly any kind of false reasoning is more ludicrous than this on the
probabilities of origination. It would be amusing to catechise the
guessers as to their exact reasons for thinking their guess "likely:"
why Hoopoe of John's has fixed on Toucan of Magdalen; why Shrike
attributes its peculiar style to Buzzard, who has not hitherto been
known as a writer; why the fair Columba thinks it must belong to the
reverend Merula; and why they are all alike disturbed in their previous
judgment of its value by finding that it really came from Skunk, whom
they had either not thought of at all, or thought of as belonging to a
species excluded by the nature of the case. Clearly they were all wrong